The Australian community devotes substantial resources to building and maintaining public collections, such as its public museums and galleries. There has been comment in this journal and elsewhere on the case for placing a financial value on cultural, heritage and scientific collections. In this paper the framework proposed by Carnegie and Wolnizer (1995) is extended to show that the valuation of the service flows that come from public collections is not only feasible; it is also desirable from a public management perspective. The paper presents the case for valuing public collections and analyses alternative valuation procedures. It concludes that the valuation of public collections is an essential component of any sound system of management of the resources applied to the running of activities such as public museums and art galleries.

This paper presents a study of the technical efficiency of industries in a transitional economy: China. Using data for 28 manufacturing industries across 29 provinces and the Data Envelopment Analysis approach, the technical efficiency of each industry is measured and compared across regions and provinces. The determinants of differential technical efficiency performance are analysed, with a particular focus on the impact of trade orientation and foreign investment. Trade openness is found generally to have a positive effect on technical efficiency. JEL classification: C6, D2, O4, and O5.

In this article we analyse trends in the economic performance of the dairy processing industry and evaluate the link between these trends and the deregulation of the industry. Using Stochastic Frontier Analysis to derive Malmquist total factor productivity estimates, we show that the industry exhibits a relatively high level of technical e¤ciency. Victoria, the major producing state, has been e¡ectively on the frontier over the period studied. In recent years, the rapid expansion in capital investment that has attended the shift towards deregulation, has been accompanied by an apparent slowdown in both productivity growth and technical progress. There is also evidence of a convergence in productivity levels across states.

There is renewed interest in robust estimates of food demand elasticities at a disaggregated level not only to analyse the impact of changing food preferences on the agricultural sector, but also to establish the likely impact of pricing incentives on households. Using data drawn from two national Household Expenditure Surveys covering the periods 1998/1999 and 2003/2004, and adopting an Almost Ideal Demand System approach that addresses the zero observations problem, this paper estimates a food demand system for 15 food categories for Australia. The categories cover the standard food items that Australian households demand routinely. Own‐price, cross‐price and expenditure elasticity estimates of the Marshallian and Hicksian types have been derived for all categories. The parameter estimates obtained in this study represent the first integrated set of food demand elasticities based on a highly disaggregated food demand system for Australia, and all accord with economic intuition.

In July 1993 the Wool Industry Review (Garnaut) Committee presented its recommendations on disposal of the wool stockpile, on wool marketing, and on organizational arrangements in the wool industry. This paper focuses on the Report's treatment of two issues central to the future economic benefits to Australia from wool: the approach to the industry's stockpile‐related debt, and disposal of the stockpile. There are strong grounds for thinking that the Garnaut Committee's recommendations on these issues– accepted by the government–are contrary to the best interests of the wool industry and Australia.